Sacrifice (Doom Tutorial) (SACRIF.ZIP)

SACRIFICE

A DOOM TUTORIAL

by John "Gestalt666" Bye

I made some assumptions on Bye's back catalog based on the way in which they were uploaded to the archive but I've come to find out that Sacrifice was actually his first published level. In 1996 he converted it to a Doom II map and then offered it up to the community along with a slightly worked-over version as a sort of Goofus / Gallant pairing. His intent was to illustrate some freshman foibles in order for beginners to have a better idea on how to handle part of PWADcraft's essential window dressing. This is the equivalent of polishing a turd due to the source material but John does show in a few instances that a bare minimum of work can breathe a bit of life into stale scenes.

The general shape and encounter of each level is essentially the same. The first part has a Wolf3D rectangle and corridor feel but gives way to some slightly more interesting room shapes, particularly the final chamber. If Bye had done anything else to buff up the architecture then this would be a more commendable endeavor. There is zero height variation, though, and while he mentions something about lighting it amounts to sticking a couple of halos around the two torches in the westernmost chamber. Almost all of the elbow grease has gone into picking different textures and fixing some basic issues with sectors and linedefs. Not to say that careful wallpapering - including alignment - isn't important.

If this before / after look may help you then SACRIFOR.WAD is the original whereas SACRIFCO.WAD is the polished version. As I mentioned, of course, it isn't an in-depth remodeling. The thing placement is basically the same. Being that it's a straight conversion to Doom II you won't find anything but basic shareware beasties. The most dangerous encounters involve false walls, the worst being a den of imps that you can skip right past. You might want to poke your head in there for the chaingun but the tendency of the implings to bunch up at the narrow aperture makes doing so potentially difficult. The title itself presumably comes from an altar located at the finale, which serves as the exit.

Maybe the simplicity of Sacrifice's presentation prevents any dilution of its message. Most players can safely avoid this package since it's about as "my first level" as these sorts of things can get. There's some solid advice in the .TXT for people who might be looking into mapping, though, and I know that an audience exists for clumsy, janky portrayals of the world of Doom.

A SNACKRIFICE